When you think of Richmond jazz in 2017, Butcher Brown is one of the first names that springs to mind. The group has been making moves and churning out funky grooves in the scene since 2012 and on Nov. 17, the quintet is set to release their latest material, Live at Vagabond, a live performance albumvia Gearbox Records.

The six-track album showcases some of their performances at local music venue Vagabond and prior to its release later this month, the boys have been dropping a few singles here and there to build excitement around their latest effort including the recent “Lysol”.

RVA Mag was fortunate to premiere Butcher Brown’s latest single, “Cairo”, and it is a six-minute prelude to what the album will offer: toe-tapping, finger-snapping, groovy bass lines.

“Cairo” is a fun track driven by synths and a wicked trumpet. It swells with crescendos and sforzando concussive beats from the drums. And yet, what I love the most is the cohesion behind the quintet’s performance here. Anything with psychedelic synths like what’s present in “Cairo” instantly has me engaged. Honestly, Butcher Brown tracks have a little for every music taste.

Composed of Devonne Harris (keys), Andrew Randazzo (bass), Corey Fonville (drums), Morgan Burrs (guitar), and Marcus Tenney (saxophone/trumpet), the group harkens the progressive jazz bands of the 60s and 70s and according to Randazzo, Live at Vagabond gives listeners a chance to hear their true sound captured if they haven’t had the opportunity already.

“We wanted a live record so our fans could hear us in the purest form, and to showcase the raw energy that occurs at a live Butcher Brown show. This record is our celebration of that development and energy in our favorite hometown venue, Vagabond,” he said.

Butcher Brown will return to Vagabond on Fri. Dec. 15 for the Live at Vagabond album release show.

Charles Owens Quartet was the featured artist for RVA Track’s monthly music video for September 2017. “Losing Victory” is the latest single from the Quartet’s last album, As One, which was released back in April. Owens’ Quartet is another big name from the Jellowstone Records crew. The quartet features Jellowstone impresario and Butcher Brown leader Devonne Harris on piano, along with Harris’s Butcher Brown bandmate Andrew Randazzo on bass, and Kelli Strawbridge (KINGS) on drums.

The video lasts for about 10 minutes and it is a full exploration of the quartet’s range in jazz sounds. Owens owns his sax lines, and Harris hammers away at a precise chaos that is quite familiar in the piano sounds of their style. Randazzo watches diligently for all the cues that Owens and Strawbridge lay out. Much of jazz revolves around improvisation, but this conductor-less ensemble relies on each other at a fundamental level.

“Everyone has certain songs that help them through hard times, and these songs did just that for me,” Owens said about As One via Bandcamp. “’Losing Victory’ was written while in my mid 20s for my now wonderful wife of almost 15 years, Vijay. I love you Vijay!”

<a href=”http://charlesowens.bandcamp.com/album/as-one”>As One by The Charles Owens Quartet</a>

The video was filmed by Craig Zirpolo, Daniel Bagbey, Gabrielle Silvers and Joey Wharton at American Paradox Records, with audio by Scott Lane (The Congress) and edited by Daniel Bagbey.

Charles Owens has no upcoming performance dates listed on his website, but did get to perform with the Roots at the recent “Concert For Charlottesville” at UVA’s Scott Stadium. Keep an eye on his facebook for upcoming dates.

For the seventh installment of RVA Track’s monthly live music video series, the local film collective chose to spotlight Kenneka Cook, an up and coming, talented jazz singer who calls Richmond home. Cook has been looping her funky jazz vocals in Richmond venues and that combined with her pipes have earned her a solid place in the local funk and jazz club scene. She has performed with local band Mikrowaves, and now the powerhouse blues singer is stepping out on her own with a debut album due to drop this winter.

“I’ve been looping for about four years,” Cook said of her recent public performances. “Looping requires a machine, an effect pedal, and you say whatever you want into it, record it, and it will repeat on a loop. After I’ve added all my vocals, I beatbox to put it to a beat. I actually got the idea from Reggie Watts, and when I tried, it was so cool!”

The whimsical sounds that arise from Cook and the jazz ensemble make the listener yearn for more. Cook has a couple songs out on YouTube, plus a TEDx Talk, but that isn’t satiating enough for those of us who want to hear more. If the music emanating from the seventh RVA Track video is any indication of how Kenneka Cook’s debut album will play, then Richmond is in for treat.

“I’ve been singing all my life,” Cook said about the origins of her music. She takes inspiration from the greats like Billie Holiday, Betty Carter and Sarah Vaughan.

“I like to sing about love, how the world needs more love, heartbreak, and my intimate surroundings. I’ll read something, or someone will say something, and I’m like, ‘Huh…’ I’ll run with it.”

Her live music video by RVA Track, “Brings Me Back”, premiered Aug. 14 and as soon as Cook opens her mouth to belt out the tune you can feel the passion and the soul behind it. It’s captivating. The video was filmed by Craig Zirpolo, Daniel Bagbey, Gabrielle Silvers and Joey Wharton at American Paradox Records, with audio by Scott Lane (The Congress), edited by Daniel Bagbey, and features a cool short animation by Leslie Herman.

Cook just finished recording her 10-track album with Lane and it’s currently out being mastered. Fans can expect a mix of covers as well as several of the singer’s original tracks.

“About half of them are mine, with one song I wrote with Scott Lane, and the rest are covers,” she said. “There’s a Vampire Weekend cover, a Nancy Sinatra cover, a little bit of everything.”

Be on the lookout on RVA Mag for when Cook’s album drops and in the meantime, you can catch the jazz singer next at Cary St. Café on Mon., Oct. 2, alongside Big Lean and Pheen.

With his previous album highlighting the perspective of a young Black man who witnesses a drive-by shooting, Dixon continues his efforts to shed light on police brutality, racism, and other struggles a young Black man faces in today’s world. Through his emotionally-charged lyrics, packed with a truthful punch, “Circle The Block” adds another layer to this conversation through lines about targeting by police, unnecessary use of force, and, quite literally, circling the block for potential suspects.

The track is off a forthcoming album, titled The Importance of Self Belief, due out sometime in August.

Within the first couple lines of the song, Dixon calls out the unnecessary force used frequently on young Black men when they’re walking down the street: “I don’t mean to resist/So, officer, why your foot on my neck and my wrist?”

Frankly, the surprising mixture of coffeehouse-jazz and hip-hop wordsmithing works perfectly for Dixon’s style and messages. Shot in Scott Lane’s (The Congress) in home studio in Jackson Ward, Dixon can be seen passionately spitting his verses while his fellow musicians churn out beats and licks on drums, electric guitar, upright bass, and keyboard, even giving the latter two instruments lengthy solos.

The audio was mixed by Scott Lane. Camera work by Craig Zirpolo, Daniel Bagby, Gabrielle Silvers, and Joey Wharton. Editing by Daniel Bagbey gave for a smooth finish between cuts and final fade.

McKinley Dixon’s energy and relevant, contemporary lyrics on racial struggles for young Black men, specifically their conflict with police brutality, is given a breath of fresh air with his accompanying jazz quartet. His music video gives comfortable scenery for a tense topic. Hopefully, future tracks and videos will follow to give us more of a taste of Dixon’s talent.

With various musical influences such as Earth, Wind & Fire, Herbie Hancock and D’Angelo, the band has what Fonville calls a “musical kinship.” The Earth, Wind & Fire influence is perhaps most apparent in songs like “James River Tunnel Vision” and “Moses” with a blend of funk, jazz and soul. The Healer’s eponymous song then takes a slower tempo as a melody laces through it. Much of the entire album feels like a resurrection of music from another era.

”It’s a funny thing though because we play these songs so much that we start adding new sections to them,” Harrison said. “So a few months after we’ve recorded, the songs sometimes start taking new directions.”

In the original composition period, Harrison usually kept a recording of jam sessions for the other members to access via Dropbox for note taking.

“The release of The Healer was tough,” Randazzo said. “That album is indicative of what we were doing in 2015, but that’s not us now. We’ve changed a bit, but we really liked it so we just wanted to have it out there for people to listen to.”

The band held the release due to being in a transition period. One of the guitarists, Keith Askey, had recently lent his talents to a backing track for Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy award-winning song, “i” and decided to relocate to Los Angeles. Butcher Brown itself was shifting to new management at the time as well.

“This just kept pushing it back and then two years later, we just decided it needed to be out, even if it’s just on bandcamp,” Randazzo said.

The band’s name is derived from a video game called Ready To Rumble in which one of the characters was named Butcher Brown. The friends/bandmates were in agreement that it was a “cool character” and a cool name to use.

“We’ve been playing together for 10 years now,” Randazzo said. “It’s almost like we grew up together.”

The men met at the cusp of manhood. Fonville was a teenager attending a jazz program at Virginia Commonwealth University when he heard Harrison play, so he kept up with Harrison’s work in the golden era of Myspace. This was in 2006. By 2009 a mutual friend Jason Arce had connected the two, along with Randazzo. It’s been tours and performances ever since.

Presently Butcher Brown has plans to record new albums. Currently, they’re loosely touring the east and west coast where they interact with other musicians, some of whom they are fans of, such as Questlove and Thundercat.

“It’s cool to just brush shoulders with these guys that we’re fans of,” Randazzo said. “Getting recognition but also get to meet the people you idolize and not just being ‘some kid.’”

Before Anneliese Grant was captivating us with her incredible vocals in The Folly, the singer/songwriter was performing on her own and after a two-year break, she’s come back with a new EP, Out to Graze.

The five-track album showcases her talent and is a bit of a different direction than The Folly’s sound. This will mark Grant’s third solo release, a follow-up to 2015’s Soul Spectrum.

Grant said Out to Graze, which is also the title of the third track on the EP, was inspired by her time spent on a horse farm during a job transition.

“This idea of frustration with not having done any solo projects in so long and this feeling like I’ve been put out to pasture, like there’s nothing happening, that was the meaning behind it,” Grant said.

The title track “Out to Graze”, which is one of my favorites, very jazzy and smooth and Grant’s voice just glides over the beat, dropped Dec. 2 and the rest was fleshed out in March.

“The rest of the songs as they were coming together, had a very similar sound to that track and it kind of was the thing that got the project going,” she said.

Grant recorded the album in April, putting it together entirely in her room.

“I have this closet studio literally, I do everything in there and it’s nicer than having to find a third party to go record with so that streamlined my process a lot,” she said.

The beats were made by Matthew Rea (Jame Moorfield), a local producer and house music DJ. Grant released the album May 1.

Out to Graze is very different from The Folly’s sound, which tends to blend several genres together. The RVA band consists of Grant, along with Jordan Lette (vocals,guitar), Johnny Powell(bass), Josh Santamaria (drums), and Sid Kingsley(keys) who put out their debut self-titled album back in September and it’s a nice mix of gypsy and jazz sounds, with a little whimsical folk thrown in.

“I started my solo project before I ever met Jordan, that’s actually how he found out about me was finding my music online,” she said. “This EP is really different from the first two EPs I put out and it was a much different process.”

Grant’s solo EP has a bluesy, groovy pop vibe, but one element that’s unmistakable among the two projects is the singer’s powerhouse sultry vocals. Grant delivers in The Folly as well as on Out To Graze and it shows her effort and passion are definitely in both projects as a solo artist and band member.

It’s hard to pick a favorite on the record, they are all good to grove to on a nice breezy summer day, but “Darling, Darling” and the title track are definitely ones to check out.

Ozark, a member of Satellite Syndicate is also featured on the album with a remix to “Out to Graze”.

Grant will perform her new EP in its entirety tonight at Cary St. Café for her release show. You can also catch her June 4 on WRIR from 1 am to 3 am and at Everybody’s Birthday, a music festival in Amherst, Va. on June 10.